John melts metal

 John has been working on casting molten aluminum. See previous posts under lables "flowerpot furnace" and "forge." The molten aluminum is poured into sand molds, and that is a whole 'nother story. But for now let us look at the evolved process. First, you find some scrap aluminum. Then you melt it in a furnace. John was originally into the Gingery charcoal furnace. So he built one. After some experimentation, we found that the Dragon Lady is the way to go. Put your scraps into a crucible (currently an old plumber's pot, destined to melt lead) and turn the Dragon Lady loose.

 

The Dragon Lady makes short work of the melting. Much faster than charcoal.  When the Lady gets going you can't see what is happening. But it is turning into a liquid at a great rate. There is a lot more to this. I recommend the Dave Gingery series on building your own machine shop from scratch. Especially Volume 1; you can Google on Gingery and get many hits.














After about ten minutes the scrap aluminum is poured into a sand mold. That is material for another post. In the meantime, if you are interested in sand casting, do look at myfordboy's blog, q.g., and look at his videos.  This is a great blog; I am adding it to my follow list.

More to come.

Melting metal at Chalupy

First of all, this is not my project. It is all John's doing. Second of all, what you will see is not entirely as safe as turning on your kitchen stove. It can be dangerous. In these litigious days be very careful and wear proper safety gear, blah blah. Consider yourself warned. Chalupy Acres disclaims all resposibility, blah blah.

What we are doing is melting Aluminum to (eventually) make castings. Before you do this for yourself, you must read the sources. We acknowledge hereby these sources. The first and most inspirational is the late lamented Dave Gingery's "Build your own Metal Working Shop from Scratch" series, 6 volumes. The first is The Charcoal Foundry, all available from Lindsay Publications. From the same source get Lionel Oliver II's The Flowerpot Crucible Furnace. Very cheap stuff, I may add.

Finally get on the net. Go to Myfordboy's blog; it should appear on the sidebar on this blog. Select his channel on YouTube. There are 30 videos (as of today) on casting; you should watch them all.

OK, on to melting metal. John built the forge. We started out with the idea of a Gingery/Oliver smelter. This runs off grocery store charcoal, the kind you use to barbecue steaks.
The basic forge involves (1) a 5 gallon Kerosene drum, main part of the thing (2) a clay flowerpot. This is imbedded in a concrete lining. The concrete is just Home Depot (or was it Lowe's?) standard stuff. There is a hole cut through all this. A piece of galvanized pipe goes through it all. In forge-speak, this is called a tuyere, the french word for "piping". A hair dryer, long defunct, provides air. With this setup you can melt Aluminum. John soon found that the Dragon Lady is a far preferable substitute. The Dragon Lady has appeared on these pages before. She is a heavy-duty propane torch bought from Harbor Freight for $13 back when. She melts snow, clears out weeds, starts charcoal fires. As it turned out we could have dispensed with the charcoal.
John is very happy. Aided by the Dragon Lady he has melted Aluminum. Lovely stuff, melted Ally. Looks like silver or perhaps like Mercury. The big pipe holds a stainless steel spoon, used to skim off the dross. This is junk, impurities you do not want. Today John will pour Aluminum cupcakes; we are not yet into making real molds.
John added common salt as a flux (makes things flow) and baking soda as a degasser. About a teaspoon each. Very effective and thank you Myfordboy. We are using fireplace tongs to hold the crucible, the container in which you put the metal. This I found long ago at a thrift store for two bucks. It is a plumber's pot originally meant for melting lead. A bit more close to the pouring process we have

At the end of the road we have taken some literally castoff Aluminum-- it was stuff I found by the roadside on a bike ride and went back and salvaged. We produced two cupcakes -- as I have said we are not yet up to casting into molds -- each weighing about 100 grams. Ten cupcakes to a Kilo. The potential is endless. John wants to make the Gingery Lathe. Refer to the sources.

By hook and by crook

A rainy day in the Mat-Su valley (not to mention the Kenai peninsula, the Alaska range, Talkeetna and north, and even the Talkeetna mountains). Bother. I was in danger of losing momentum. I had seen this coming and so had the weather service; they were "spot on" as they say in the UK. So I went out to the shop and fiddled about with my stick chairs; some progress made but it was clearly not what the Universe wanted me to do. OK, Universe, what is it you want? Aha! Forging today. Trouble with this is that I cannot use my Dragon Lady Forge when it's raining. Were I to move it into the shop, I'd burn it to the ground. My shop is one big inflammable object. I can't use Dragon Lady outside, because it will burn my awning and indeed, already has. So I was reduced to the humble propane torch as a heat source. Slow and limited in area, but safe. So after a very engrossing while, we had a hook and a crook.On the right, the hook. It is a hook tool, used to turn bowls on a pole lathe. I believe I mentioned it before. Anyway, today I gave it a preliminary grinding. Then I bent it, which was quite difficult (bending is easy, but bending into the shape you want is much harder). Then I got it heated up and gave it an oil quench as an experiment. Some authorities claim you can skip the tempering step if you oil quench. I heated it carrot-red and stuffed it into my pail of old motor oil I keep around for just such a purpose. Did it work? Don't know yet. In fact, it depends on the type of steel. The hook is a broken-off tine from a spading fork. Who knows what type of steel it is? I don't.

On the left is the crook. A garden tool, made from a piece of snowmobile or ATV that I found on my walks. It is known as a Maine hoe. I didn't know the Maine-iacs had invented this thing, I came up with it all by myself. It will be used to de-weed closely planted crops, which means all of my crops. It is an L shape with chisel edges everywhere. It will get a long handle (also found on walks). I may bend it into the 70 deg angle recommended by Eliot Coleman for collineal hoes. Since this is a garden tool, I don't think I will temper it. It has to cut weeds, not woods.

Progress made. Chalupy has another good day.